


Just Fine (but i'm calling out)

by LadyHoneydee



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23955373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyHoneydee/pseuds/LadyHoneydee
Summary: Long-term power couple Zelda and Link have broken up, and Zelda is devastated. Unfortunately, it's hard to heal when you keep seeing your ex everywhere you go.
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 85





	Just Fine (but i'm calling out)

_He_ was everywhere.

Before, Zelda always had to seek Link out. He’d be lurking in back corners of green gardens, or in secluded hallways away from the core of the party, standing off to the side with a soft smile. He’d be laughing wildly while hanging out with his little sister or his best friends, but never where she expected them to be. It was like she needed a search party to find him, every time.

After, Zelda couldn’t seem to escape him. 

The first time Zelda saw Link After, he was sitting alone at a table for two in her—their—favorite coffee shop, which she hadn’t realized she couldn’t go to anymore. Now that they weren’t together, that is. Out of all the things she had been overthinking since their explosive argument a week ago, the places they’d shared for the last three years that would hurt to share now had not been one of them, and she was kicking herself for not realizing that.

As the young, bored-looking cashier rang up her total, Zelda hid her face behind her curtain of blonde hair and tucked her chin further into her knit periwinkle scarf, trying to make herself as unassuming and unrecognizable as possible. The source of her frustration was just behind her, and who was she to tempt fate and draw his attention—if she hadn’t already, anyway. 

“Peatrice, is it?” Zelda asked, reading the cashier’s name tag. 

“Mmm,” she grunted in reply. 

Friendly girl. 

“Could I, uh, possibly actually get that mocha to go?” Zelda requested, mouth twisting into a sheepish smile.

Peatrice’s lips pursed. 

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Zelda tacked on.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s whatever...not like I have anything better to do anyway…” the girl droned, and Zelda stifled a grin. She remembered the zombie days of working retail and food service quite well. Although she’d never been quite as dead on her feet as this girl seemed to be. 

Zelda’s mirth drained away as she waited for Peatrice the Blasé Barista to adjust her order. Now that there was no one to distract her, it was a hell of a lot harder to not think of Link. She tried to pretend he wasn’t just a few feet away from her for the first time since the fight. Tried to pretend the coat she’d helped him pick out before the interview for his current part-time gardening gig, the green suede with leather patches, wasn’t slung over the back of his chair. Tried to pretend she didn’t know the exact ratio of sugar to coffee sitting in his dingy thermos at this very second. Tried to pretend she couldn’t feel his piercing blue eyes on her back, as she fumbled her change and swore too loudly at the counter.

Tried to pretend she wouldn’t take it like a knife if he had never looked at her at all.

It had only been a week, but she missed his blue eyes, his sunshine smile, his gentle hands. She missed his dependable silence on mornings where they’d read outside hand in hand, and his sarcastic quips when they’d bake together on the weekends and she’d forget where she’d left the measuring cup for the billionth time. She missed his comforting warmth spooning against her back when they went to sleep and his head taking up her entire pillow when she woke up.

Nayru, she missed him, and he wasn’t hers to miss anymore. It had been seasons. It had been ages. It had been _one. week._ And he seemed like he was doing just fine without her.

“Your coffee’s done.”

Zelda shot Peatrice a tight smile as she snatched her drink. She jerked it too quickly for the amount of liquid in her cup, and winced; flecks of hot coffee had sloshed out of the disposable lid, scalding her bare hands. Then again, she’d been through much more pain so far this week, albeit of a different sort. What was the Lumpy Pumpkin’s mocha against a broken heart?

Her heels clopped on the coffee-stained wooden floor as she speed-walked for the door, a pace better suited for the last five seconds of a crosswalk than the inside of a coffee shop. She knew that it looked like she was trying to escape, and the shame of it made her face burn. A part of her yelled shrilly that she should hold her head high. 

_Sit down at that table. Drink your mocha long and slow. Maybe take a phone call and laugh a bit too much. Make him jealous. Make him wonder._

But she herself had wondered too much in the last week, and she couldn’t stand to spend even one more moment in that shop. That shop, with its aroma of ground coffee beans overwhelming in her nose. With the chatter of couples and families cacophonous in her ears. If she stayed another second she’d surely snap. 

The bell on the door jangled cheerfully behind her, but to Zelda it sounded more like a funeral toll.

Her hands didn’t stop shaking until she was five blocks away.

* * *

The fifth time Zelda chanced upon Link, he strolled right into some godforsaken corner of the local Malo Mart department store where she was crouched examining the shoe selection. She’d been too focused on a magnificent pair of heels—her presence had been requested for a fancy fundraiser event for her law program, and these pumps would be perfect—and missed the approaching muffled thumping of footsteps on the industrial beige carpet. Now, he was but ten feet away. How they had ended up in the same row, among all the mazes of rows in the store, she didn’t know. The electric blue pumps Zelda had been admiring lost all pigment next to the blue of his eyes, which widened as they made contact with her own. 

For a moment, the world fell away, and it was just her and him. And she thought for a moment that he’d say something. Anything. Even a hello. 

But the moment broke as he ducked his head down jerkily toward a display of hiking boots. Zelda recognized them as the exact style and company he already owned. The ones he’d destroyed on their backpacking trip in Faron Woods, running down the treads until they were nearly smooth on the bottom, and caking mud so deep into the green laces they stained permanently brown. Oh, how they had laughed at the accidental dye job when they got back to his family’s old cabin in Ordon, an hour’s drive from the trailhead parking lot.

 _Will I ever hear his laugh again?_

She’d adored Link’s laugh so much, and even though two weeks had passed since the break-up, she hadn’t realized until now that it was out of her life forever. She didn’t think she could bear it if that laugh she’d loved so much belonged to a stranger. A stranger that—she watched his familiar form bent further over the hiking display, seemingly having forgotten she was even there—looked like he was doing just fine without her.

She numbly snagged a box of the blue pumps and booked it.

* * *

The eighth time Zelda saw Link, he was leaning against a wood-paneled wall at a party Zelda didn’t think he’d attend, nursing a glass of whiskey. 

Just that afternoon, she honestly wasn’t sure if she’d make it to the party either. It felt like she was swimming through honey every time she went anywhere these days. She’d tried to convince herself that she didn’t want to go out because her apartment was just so cozy, with its scented candles and snuggly afghans, but she knew deep down the problem was the black rock in her chest where her heart should be.

Her apartment wasn’t that great anyway. All the afghans and candles she owned hadn’t kept her from crying in the bath the other night.

She felt like an idiot for forgetting that Link would be here tonight. Hadn’t Malon warned her, that afternoon last week when they met for ice cream, that she’d invited Link to cater for the party? Malon had always agreed with Zelda that Link should try to get into professional cooking, and this had been her way of trying to steer him in that direction. When Zelda had confessed to her that she and Link had broken up a week ago, Malon had chastised Zelda for waiting so long to tell her, and then gave Zelda a big, warm, hug—a Malon specialty—that made Zelda feel something more than shame and sadness for the first time in a week. Later, between spoonfuls of her favorite chocolate ice cream, Malon had apologized to Zelda profusely after for inviting Link to cater, especially since it was too short of notice now to get someone else. Zelda had waved it off. After all, she knew better than anyone that only Link was capable of making a meal superb enough for Malon. In the light of day, with the party still on the distant horizon, she’d thought she could handle it.

She was not handling it.

Looking at Link now, she observed how well the golden brown of his choice of beverage matched his hair. Had it grown out since she last saw him? She kept looking at him, stealing glances long into the evening, although she knew—she knew, she fucking _knew_ —that it was no good, it wouldn’t do any good, it wasn’t good.

It would never be good. Not anymore, when he was just fucking _fine_ without her. When he was her _ex_ now, even if she still had trouble thinking of him as one. 

Ugh, this was ridiculous. She hadn’t forced herself out here tonight to just pine over her _ex_ like a sap. She came here for one reason and one reason only: Malon, the queen of the party, and Zelda had neglected her kind friend for far too long. Come to think of it, she’d been neglecting her wineglass for far too long as well. Zelda took a hearty gulp of Malon’s good Merlot and turned to face the hubbub at the dining table. 

Malon’s red hair came a bit too close to the flames it resembled as she blew out all twenty four candles on the pink and white-iced cake. Zelda tugged her tipsy friend back a step to be safe. Then she cheered along with the other partygoers. 

The wish wasn’t hers to take, but she made one anyway. There had been an absence of falling stars lately.

_I wish I didn’t feel so empty._

The empty places in her filled up with wine and guilt throughout the evening, as she cursed herself for not enjoying the party like she should. Like everyone else could. It had been for Malon’s sake that Zelda had eventually dragged herself off of her couch and to her friend’s house. She knew she’d come to regret it if she missed her close friend’s birthday party. Malon had assured her days ago that if Zelda wasn’t up to it, she didn’t have to come, but her friend deserved better than that. 

She was here now, though, and her stomach churned like a washing machine at her new inability to function like a regular human being. What kind of friend was she, unable to feel happy for one of her best friends on her special day?

At some point, she overheard Link begging off from the celebration. Just by hearing the too-familiar tones of his voice, all her hard work trying to forget he existed went right down the drain. He assured their fellow complaining and concerned partygoers that he was just fine, citing an early morning the next day as his excuse to get away. After all, he told them, it was natural for him to be tired after cooking up a storm for Malon’s acre-long guest list! Link pecked a bubbly Malon on the cheek as he picked his shoes out of the jumbled pile by the door, and though she knew those were the lips of a friend, Zelda still turned away. 

Despite her place in the dining area, far from the front door in the hallway behind Malon’s cramped kitchen, Zelda felt it when Link swung open the townhouse’s front door to go home. As he left, he let in a nasty draft; she felt cold for hours after. The chill clung long in her bones even after she stumbled home, lit every single candle she could find and curled up on the couch in an afghan the color of sunset. She wondered dimly if she’d ever feel warm again.

* * *

The thirteenth time Zelda happened across Link, he was in the library looking like an erudite’s daydream, when she dropped her law books down on a nearby study table. He looked studious and comfortable, with the background of tall, dark bookshelves richly stocked, and the tall stacks of books surrounding him. She could see even from ten feet away that his reading materials had titles like _Gardening with Perennials_ and _Harvest Table_ and _The Secrets of Rice_. It was a picture she’d seen—and admired—a thousand times.

Secrets of rice, _psh_. If anyone knew those, it was Link. He could be a bona fide chef if he wanted to, if he would go to culinary school like she suggested. 

He absentmindedly pushed a too-long lock of hair behind an ear as he turned a page, and just like that she was thrown back into his kitchen, seated at the table. The two of them kissing, smiling. Then talking. Voices raising. The thump of a cookbook leaving his hands and thwacking the table as he gestured. The tension rising until they were both shouting and swearing at each other. The slam of a door. The growl of her engine. 

The silent tears in the car on the drive home.

It wasn’t their first fight about his future. Or their future.

It was their last.

Friends had always marveled at how symbiotic her and Link had been as a couple. “You never fight,” they said. “You get along so well all the time,” they said. More than once had a girlfriend of Zelda’s come to her for advice on how to have as stable of a relationship as she and Link shared. She hadn’t had the heart to tell them that it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, despite outward appearances. They were so even-keeled as a couple that whenever they did disagree, they didn’t know what to do with themselves. And when they were fighting against each other rather than alongside, things got vicious. They knew exactly how to hurt the other, no holds barred.

That night, she’d said that he was a child in a grown man’s body, scared to get a real job and actually start being an adult. He’d said that she had run out of things in her own life to micromanage and had moved onto his. Now, over three tense weeks later, she’d found that they’d both been right. But it still made her ache to recall the venom he’d spewed at her and the insults she’d spat right back. 

Sick to her stomach as she forced herself out of the memories and back into the library, but knowing she’d feel sicker if she failed next week’s final exam, Zelda opened her top textbook and began to read. Each page took ten minutes and an effort that would put the heroes of legend to shame, the words blurring together on the paper. 

Sometime around eight, Link’s chair screeched against the stone tiles as he went to stand, and she watched him look around apologetically and then hustle out. He’d always gotten embarrassed when drawing attention in public, and it was bittersweet to see all the things that were still the same about him even though she wasn’t with him to see them. 

She tried to ignore the warm baritone of his voice as the young librarian at the front desk checked out his books. The girl—Link called her Lana—twirled a strand of cotton-candy blue hair around a finger as she wished him a good night, and Zelda cringed at the obvious flirtation. Then she cringed at her own jealousy.

She didn’t leave the library until midnight, long after the blue-haired girl’s shift ended and everyone else in the reading room had left.

* * *

The nineteenth time Zelda saw Link, he was walking through the grass parking lot streets away from the small venue the Indigo-Go’s had just finished playing. Soaked with sweat from dancing to the music, her blonde hair wild, Zelda was almost back to her car when she turned the corner, only to come face to face with him ambling down the same row. The yellow street lamp lit up his own wayward hair, and she could make no mistake about who it was. 

He was here, somehow. Again. 

How on Din’s red earth had she missed him in that teeny concert hall? 

Instantly, the post-concert adrenaline coursing through her veins transitioned into something a lot more intense.

Link had obviously recognized her as well. His gaze darted up and down her body, from her laced-up black combat boots to her high-waisted jeans to her black bralette-style crop top. Maybe he was thinking about all the concerts they’d gone to together with that outfit on. 

How he used to tease her that they were going to a concert, not the front lines, when she brought out the boots. How she’d pretend to step on his foot with them until he relented and told her how much he liked the boots – no, really, he did! How he would tickle her until both of their breathing was uneven and their foreheads were pressed together, waiting for gravity to pull their lips together too. 

How sometimes, they’d miss the concert altogether, and the boots would be pulled out from under the mixed pile of their clothes the following morning and tucked safely back into their shoebox for next time.

Against her will, her gaze dragged over the brown leather jacket that draped open around a plain white tee and the well-fitting blue jeans. _Fuck_. How could one man be more handsome than all of the rest of the goddesses’ creation combined?

Before she could think, she spoke.

“Link.”

“Zelda,” he replied, eyes meeting her own.

For a moment neither said another word.

Link started, “I just wanted—”

Zelda began, “My car is—”

They both paused, waiting for the other to take the plunge. Zelda thought she saw a corner of Link’s lips quirk up in amusement, but his face was too shadowed to tell for sure. 

“Oh geez, I’m—”

“Sorry, I’m sorry—”

Another pause. 

This all felt so uncanny. Of all the times they had talked over each other, never had it been so uncomfortable, even in the earliest stage of their relationship when he couldn’t talk to her without fidgeting with any object not nailed down. He’d never looked at her quite like this, like she was a puzzle he had no clue how to solve. And he was damn good at puzzles. 

“How’ve you been?” Link asked, sounding as awkward as she felt. 

Zelda’s gaze gravitated to the grass and refused to raise an inch. “Just fine. Um. Thanks.” _Reaaaal eloquent there, Zelda._ “And you?”

“Oh me? I’ve been fine too. Just fine. Yep,” Link replied. 

The silence stretched out again until Zelda could bear it no longer. 

“This is so _wrong_ ,” she moaned, head dropping into her hands for a moment. “So wrong.”

She thought he murmured in agreement, but couldn’t make it out. Even that little hint of a confirmation buoyed her spirits, and she willed herself to lift her face. _Stand tall. Stop hiding._

“Can you feel it too, Link?” Her words came slowly, haltingly, but she willed him to listen, to agree. “How _wrong_ this all is? We’re not supposed to be like this!” The words scraped their way up her throat; the urge to run away as fast as she could made her legs tense and quiver. 

But it was now or never for them. It really was. The clock was ticking; it had been since the moment she walked out that door. If she didn’t hear his true feelings now, she probably wouldn’t get the chance again.

_Tell me that you feel it too._

Somehow, they’d moved closer while she spoke. Only a few feet separated them now. He was close enough for her to smell his natural woodsy scent. Close enough to see the fragile hope in his eyes, and with a realization like a lightning bolt down her spine, know that maybe he’d been as far from fine as she was. 

A dry sob choked its way out of her chest despite all her efforts to hold it back. “I’ve been homesick for you for so _long,_ Link…”

That was all it took.

In two strides he was right in front of her, so close and sudden that the proximity was dizzying. The scent of pine and musk and _home_ enveloped her as he wrapped his arms around her and drew her in. Their bodies were flush, like muscle memory, like puzzle pieces. They fit together as if they’d been built for it. 

She wasn’t sure how long they’d been standing like that when she felt him pull back a little ways, and she reluctantly released him, meeting his eyes. His gaze was unwavering but his smile was fragile. He looked at her like she was an oasis and he was a thirsty man wandering the desert, wondering if it was real. 

His strong hands slid up her back, crossing the planes of her shoulder blades, and glided along the pale column of her neck to cradle her face with the utmost gentleness, an unspoken question in his eyes. She gave a tiny nod, and her eyelids drifted shut as he erased the distance between them at last.

 _Farore_ , she’d forgotten how good his kisses were. 

Eventually they came up for air, and pulled away just an inch, breathing each other in. They were magnets of opposite poles, the current too strong to be drawn apart any further. 

“You smell good,” she said dumbly, and he threw back his head and laughed. 

“Fuck, Zelda, I missed you so much,” he said, and the tension that had been coiling in her her muscles this last long month melted away like snow in the spring.

Her arms wrapped around him as she buried her face in his shoulder. “We are never ever doing this again, you absolute _bastard_.” But there was joy on her face, and a lightness in her heart she hadn’t felt in a month. She clutched at the brown leather on his back, hoping he could tell from her embrace just how much she had been craving this.

“Never,” he vowed, fervently, before claiming her mouth again.

This kiss was more. It was fire and ice, light and shadow. It was the press of his lips and the glide of her tongue and her fingers in his hair. It was his hands on her hips. It was her giggle when their teeth clicked together as their mouths reconnected and the groan that tore from his chest. It was beauty and symphony and electricity coursing in a circuit from her toes, her spine, her lips and back again. It was danger and risk and loss and forgiveness and healing, healing, healing. 

It was everything she’d yearned and ached for for the last month, and all of a sudden she couldn’t go another minute without giving him all of her. She opened her eyes, taking a moment to admire his beauty: his swollen lips and golden skin, the magic of his blue eyes as he blinked them open. She opened her mouth to speak and—

“I love you, Zelda.”

She narrowed her eyes teasingly at the impediment of her own confession, and he laughed again. “Sorry, sorry. Seems I keep interrupting you tonight.”

“Yeah, I thought you were supposed to be the quiet one in the relationship,” Zelda joked, and bumped him gently with her shoulder.

“I think I’ve been quiet a little too long, honestly,” he said, and she felt his fingers clench almost imperceptibly from where they rested on her hips. “No. I know I’ve been too quiet.”

“This last month in particular,” she murmured, gaze dropping away from his own.

“Yeah but...even before then, I don’t know.” He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. “This relationship thing, it’s supposed to be about communication. And I dropped the ball on that. I just…. We were fighting so much about the chef thing, and I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted, and I _still_ don’t, but—” he took a deep breath. “I know I want you, Zelda. Even if I have a sorry way of showing it.”

It was more words than he’d spoken at once to her, maybe ever. Her quiet Link, off-to-the side Link, would-rather-be-in-the-woods-Link, was putting himself out there. And she knew just how much courage that took.

“It’s not just your fault, Link.” His brow furrowed, and she put up a hand to stop the rebuttal she knew was coming. “Hey, you had your say. Let me have mine.”

His lips twitched up into a reluctant smile, and he motioned her forward soundlessly.

“You were right when you said that I was trying to micromanage your life. I didn’t know it then, but you were. And I shouldn’t have done that to you, and I’m sorry. I could tell you so much bullshit about why I did it, but. But the truth is that I’m a lawyer and I don’t know when to shut up. The truth is that I can’t manage a damn thing.” She laughed dryly. “My life sure fell apart this last month, anyway.”

“Mine too,” Link said quietly. 

“So I’m going to try not to be the backseat driver of your life. I’ll probably relapse a time or two but—” her brow furrowed sheepishly— “I’m gonna try to listen to you more. To what you say, and especially what you don’t.”

Link met her gaze and her words head on. “And I’m going to try to open up more. And I’ll try to ask for help— _your_ help—when I need it. Not just be a one-man army.”

“That’s all I can ask for,” Zelda said. She could’ve left it there, could’ve let them go on with things now, but she had one more thing to say. The earlier urge to confess all still tingled in her fingers, and who was her brain to hold back her heart?

“Link, I love you. So fucking much. And no matter what you want to do with your life, I wanna be there. Chef, or gardener, or a hermit in the woods, I don’t care!” 

She smiled then, a grin that bubbled out of her heart and up her throat and onto her lips. Wonder glowed on his face like the embers of a fire; he was quite possibly the most stunning thing she’d ever seen. She took a moment to commit his expression to memory, and then continued. “I want to be there with you. And if you’ll fight for this, I’ll fight for this.”

One poke and the embers burst into flame, a blaze just as brilliant as it had always been—perhaps moreso. Voice almost choked with sincerity, he pledged, “I’ll always fight for you.”

That was the truth. And she knew it in her gut, in her bones, in all the places that were screaming out _yes yes yes._ He was here and he was home, and she was never leaving again.

Link gingerly reached out his hand, and the sweet caution on his face even after all of this kissing and promising made her heart ache for a moment. She took his hand and squeezed it one, two, three times. _I love you._

He squeezed back: _I love you too_.

Together, they exited the parking lot. There was a twenty-four hour diner across the street calling their name.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to give a big thank you and shout-out to my beta readers and friends shadow_djinni, midnasass, and GourdKin, who helped me with this fic more than I can say. They're all fantastic writers, so check out their works—all of them have written for Zelda before as well!


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